


losing light

by dia_gonalley



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Ghost!Marinette, a lil sad tbh, ghost au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 11:26:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10638882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dia_gonalley/pseuds/dia_gonalley
Summary: They say a new house can be a new start. For Adrien Agreste, though, every house was the same. Too many possessions, too much room, and never anyone to be close to. But this mansion, unlike any of the others, has a history.He must just be seeing things.However, someone else may beg to differ.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! It's been a while since I've written anything, but I signed up for the Miraculous Guess-Who challenge to encourage myself, and here we are! This is meant to be the first chapter of a longer story that I have planned out.  
> Happy reading!

Adrien shivered as he stepped into the enourmous entrance hall of his new house. The clack of his dress shoes echoed across the arched ceiling and spun the dripping crystals of the chandelier. It was cool inside, raising the gooseflesh on his arms and prompting him to turn and lift an eyebrow at his father’s assistant.

“Nathalie, why on Earth is it so cold in here?” The millionaire’s son spoke with a posh accent remeniscent of power, and the rich getting richer.

“I’m sorry, sir. We’re doing the best we can to make it the most comfortable it can be.” She stepped out of the way of a staggering mover carrying a stack of boxes twice as tall as himself, and motioned with her pencil the way they were to go.

Adrien watched as he struggled up the grand staircase. “It’s fine, honestly, don’t worry yourself, Nathalie.”

“Are you sure, sir? We can-”

He spoke firmly. “It doesn’t matter. Now, could you please show me where my room is?”

As she swept him upstairs, he could have sworn the chandelier was swaying, ever so slightly.

 

Adrien stepped inside his new bedroom. For him, it was the same thing time after time. The climbing wall was new, but before he had a pinball machine, and before that a massage chair, and before that, the biggest train set money could buy. The furniture might have been new, the layout may be new, but he knew it didn’t matter.

 

The click of the door behind him jarred him. The first time he was alone in this room. “The first time of many,” he joked to himself as he dropped onto the sofa. _Nicely springy, no memory foam, soft suede._ As he grabbed the remote, the TV sparked on. He blinked at it in shock, then glanced back at the remote. _Must have accidentally pressed the power button._ Shrugging, he settled back for a thriller marathon.

 

~

 

The hallways just seemed so...unnecessary. _The kids on 20 Kids and Counting don’t have this much room, and there’s at least twenty of them. I lost count around thirteen._ It all seemed so impractical to Adrien, that his father and him could use all this. _I bet if I screamed, really loudly, my father wouldn’t be able to hear me._ A chill swept through his body at what could happen as he reached the dining room.

 

The dark wood beams on the walls stretched into oblivion, and the only light came from fixtures on the wall that shone muted white light onto the glass table in the center. It was honestly incredible. It could seat twenty-seven, it was made in Algeria, and Adrien had no godly clue how his father had gotten it into the house. Speaking of his father, he was sitting at the head of the table, thirty-five feet away, with his food in front of him waiting for Adrien to sit down and eat. He pulled out his chair, and his father picked up his knife and began sawing at the expensive steak. Adrien followed suit, and they sat in uncomfortable silence until Gabriel cleared his throat with a look on his face that clearly said, _I have no idea how to talk to young people_ , and said, “How’s the move been for you, son?”

“It’s been… nice, Father.” Adrien cut off a small portion of his steak, chewing slowly. “But I must ask, why did we have to move? I understand that your main factory was relocated, but that’s never forced us to leave before.”

Gabriel shook his head. “You know why, son.” His eyes flicked over to the portrait on the wall before settling back on his plate.

Adrien caught his breath and nodded. They only sat for a minute more before Adrien’s father pushed his plate away and left the room, declaring he had work to do. The huge table stretched out alongside Adrien as he quietly finished his dinner, nodding to the servants as he walked out. His eyes followed the pattern of the carpet, moving back and forth with the waving lines.

Eventually his head followed, then his legs as he put one foot in front of the other. Laughing to himself, he walked the lines like a tightrope. The world began to fade around him as he focused on his balance. He was a circus performer, and the crowd was cheering as-

Suddenly, a crash started him from his act, and he teetered, then tottered, then toppled from the rope, hands grasping at air as he...landed on his butt on the carpet. A picture had fallen off the wall, and the glass had cracked over his own smiling face. Adrien left quickly, head up this time, but as he walked away, he could swear he heard applause.

 

A shiver went down his back as he stepped into his room, and he slammed the door behind him on a reflex. _That’s strange._ This whole house was putting him on edge, way more than usual. Normally, he could ignore all the little things that were different from the houses before. Adrien rolled his eyes. _Quit being so dramatic,_ he laughed at himself as he started changing for bed. The strange thing is that he thought he was ignoring it. It felt like something else, besides just the normal creakings of a house.

Not that any house of Gabriel Agreste’s was going to dare to creak.

_It must be a rat or something in the walls,_ Adrien decided, pulling on pajama pants. He rubbed his eyes as he practically fell into his bed, not even bothering to turn off the lights before curling up under the covers.

 

~

 

A crash from outside woke Adrien, and he pushed himself up, rubbing his eyes. Someone, probably Nathalie, had turned off the lights, and he found himself in near-total darkness. Light shone from somewhere, he couldn’t figure out where.

_He’d had the strangest dream…_

A glance at the clock showed him that it was almost 1:30 in the morning. Adrien flopped back into bed and groaned. He couldn’t go back to sleep _now_. With a sigh, he pulled back the covers. Still in sleep-mode, it took his brain a couple minutes to figure out that the light from before was coming from his wall. The outline of a door shone out. Before Adrien’s sleepy brain could warn him that this was probably _not a good idea,_ he was sitting on the floor in front of the wall trying to figure out how it opened. It took a few minutes of patting blindly, but he found a handle parallel to the wall. As he hooked his fingers around the cold metal, his brain finally caught up.

_Hey… this is, like, a really bad idea. You know that, right?_

_Whatever,_ Adrien told himself. _It’ll be fine. Like, probably._

While he had been talking to himself, he didn’t notice the light had gone out. This should probably have been a warning sign for Adrien, but he didn’t care. He pulled the door open with a grunt, a squeak of the hinges, and a poof of dust. Coughing, he sat back on his heels to look at his handiwork. There was a hole in the wall a few feet tall and a couple feet wide. Just big enough for a teenage girl, or maybe Adrien Agreste, a young model who doesn’t eat as much as he should. Before he could doubt himself, he crawled in, squeezing his shoulders through the hole.

 

~

 

He crawled through a short tunnel, no doubt catching threads of his pants on the ragged floors, but he kept going.

That is, until he ran headfirst into a wall.

Adrien stumbled back, rubbing his forehead, and realizing as he sat there that he couldn’t be in the tunnel anymore. He actually had enough room to move his legs. And arms! And the room was so pitch-black he didn’t know if he could find the tunnel again.

Oops.

As he sat there, trying to figure out what to do, the situation he had gotten himself into caught up to him. He had opened a glowing door in his room at 2 in the morning, and now he was stuck. Adrien tried to hold it in, but a snort escaped him. Then another. And another, until he was laughing at nothing.

He realized, a little later, that something was different. When he had closed his eyes when he first burst out laughing, everything was still dark. But now, as his laughing slowed, he noticed that something was casting light. It was so bright, he could see it even with closed eyes.

Unconsciously, he pulled his legs in closer.

Adrien had to open his eyes at some point. He knew that, he wasn’t stupid. But for once in his life, he had no clue what he would find. He set his teeth and forced his eyes open to see-

A pair of big blue eyes right in front of his.

Adrien gasped, arms and legs shooting out to push him away from whatever was there. He scrambled back, his wide-eyed gaze locked on the person in front of him. They were mirroring him, and he noticed he could see the wall behind them. A second later, the realization came that whoever “they” was, they were the source of the light. They were glowing.

The mysterious person looked up, and Adrien noticed a few things at once. Their long eyelashes. Their puffy pigtails. Their pink lips.

So the mysterious person was a girl. From the eyes, a young girl. His age at most.

“I’m sorry!”

She can talk.

The girl’s voice was light and sweet and panicked.

“I didn’t know- I’m sorry. You look like a model in a magazine I read and I thought-”

Adrien realized he hadn’t said anything yet. His throat was dry.

“No.” The girl stopped suddenly, mouth formed in a perfect ‘o’. “You were right. I’m Adrien Agreste.”

Much to his surprise, the girl didn’t scream or jump or anything like that. She just took a deep breath and held out her hand.

“My name’s Marinette.”

Adrien reached to grasp her hand.

He never did.

His hand passed through hers like it wasn’t even there. He gaped at his hand, then hers, and the world went black to her apologies.


End file.
